El Centro, CA Federal Housing Finance Agency Home Price Index (FHFA HPI)

The El Centro, CA, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI) is a weighted, repeat-sales index that measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties. The index was created to provide a more timely and accurate measure of house price trends than other existing indices because it captures data from all home sales and refinances in the United States regardless of loan type.

In order to be included in the HPI, a property must have at least two recorded sales transactions or one recorded sale transaction and one recorded refinancing transaction. The HPI covers single-family homes with one to four units and condominiums with one to four units. Properties that are considered non-marketable are excluded from the HPI, such as vacant land, mobile homes not affixed to land, institutionalized group quarters (e.g., prisons), and certain types of cooperative housing.

The El Centro metropolitan statistical area includes all of Imperial County in California. As of 2019, the population of El Centro was estimated at 180,865. The median home value in El Centro is $134,100, which is much lower than the national median home value of $219,700.

There are several reasons for the low median home value in El Centro. First, the area has a high unemployment rate at 16 percent as of December 2019. This is due largely to the fact that nearly half of all jobs in El Centro are related to agriculture, which is an industry that is highly susceptible to fluctuations in weather and market conditions. Second, almost 30 percent of residents live below the poverty line. This means that many residents cannot afford to purchase a home or they may be struggling to keep up with mortgage payments on their current home if they purchased during better economic times. Third, foreclosures have been a problem in El Centro since the early 2000s when housing prices began to rise rapidly across the country followed by a sharp decrease during the Great Recession which hit California particularly hard (El Centro was one of only three metro areas nationwide where foreclosure rates actually increased during this time).

All these factors have contributed to relatively low home equity levels for homeowners in El Centro as well as depressed house prices overall. As recently as 2016, only about 38 percent of homeowners had positive equity in their homes while 62 percent were underwater on their mortgages (meaning they owed more than their homes were worth). However, there has been some improvement since then as house prices have slowly begun to recover and unemployment has fallen slightly from its peak during the recessionary years. In 2019, 47 percent of homeowners had positive equity while 53 percent were still underwater on their mortgages according